This is the national stage application of PCT/US01/01923 filed on Jan. 19, 2001. Various systems have been discussed in the prior art for assisting a user to select coordinated and properly sized articles of wearing apparel; e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,149,246; 4,539,585; 5,163,007; 5,515,248; 5,680,528; 5,724,522; 5,850,222; 5,930,769; 5,937,081; 5,970,471 and 5,974,400.
Applicant's priority applications describe the use of a monitor for electronically displaying a facial image in combination with a garment supporting structure which can be used as follows:    (1) Provide a facial image capture set up at a point of sale.    (2) Facial images of customers are collected with this setup.    (3) The facial image is digitized into electronics data and stored as a file.    (4) A code word or file name is assigned to each file to identify the facial image of one customer from another.    (5) The file is decoded and displayed on the computer monitor mounted on top of the garment displaying stand.    (6) Input device such as key pad, joystick, mouse or other point device and even voice recognition device are used to identify which facial image is to be displayed and also to provide adjustment, options selection and modification of the facial image or the relative position of the image to be displayed.
With greater investment in storage memory and image playback facilities, multiple facial images from different viewing angles can be collected. In this situation, the display stand can be rotated for viewing the garment in different orientations, when the orientation of the facial image is changed. If multiple facial images are collected at a high frame rate such as 25 frames per second while the viewing angle is continuously changing, the playback of the facial image at the monitor will provide a movie like movement result. To fully match with the movie play back effect, such as when the user's head is turning left or right, the garment is moved in the same direction and in synchronization with the head turning motion displayed. The overall result becomes an animated presentation of the garment coordination matching with the user.
Once a customer registers his/her facial image at an image capturing facility, the image file, identified by a code word, can be sent to a remote computer by a communication channel. A communication link (or communication channel) refer to any means connecting two computing devices together, including internet, intranet, extranet, ISDN, DSL, LAN and any future connection systems. The communication channel can be provided by wired lines such as cable, optical lines or telephone lines. It can be connected to the computer by any commercially available format of communication such as COM port, parallel port, Firewire and USB port. In addition to connected wires, the communication channel can be furnished by wireless channel such as RF and infra red channels as well. An example of RF link is represented by the recently established Bluetooth standard. A fashion store may also set up a library of images representing its garment collection at the remote computer. Garment images can be created by the same process to capture the electronics image file of a facial image; partially or completely created by image drafting software commercially available. With this service, customers may access the web site of the fashion store from the internet or the world wide web to fetch the file representing their facial images and/or the images of the garment to be selected. With the support of proper software, the facial image of the customer and the garment can be combined and displayed on the computer monitor located at the home of the potential customer. Personalized animated fashion show is also possible if multiple facial images and the garment are provided. This service gives customers greater confidence before they placed mail orders and avoids returns. Alternatively, customers may preview their preferred garment, and coordinated with their facial images. After customers record their preference, they may place a mail order. Alternatively customers may go to a store to actually try their short listed preferences and then confirm their purchase.